Racism likely cost Obama votes in 2012, but his latest polling drop is among non-southern whites and nonwhites
Does being black cost President Obama support among white voters?
We all know that there's a certain proportion of the electorate that's not going to support Obama because he's black. Obama lost the white vote in 2012, according to the final pre-election Pew Research poll. In the south, with its long history of racism, Obama lost the white vote by an astounding 39pt. Compare that to the rest of the country where he didn't lose the white vote in any other region by more than 9pt.
A very interesting paper (pdf) by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz looked at Google search terms and found that Obama did worse in southern areas where racist terms were searched more frequently. Even if you think Stephens-Davidowitz underestimates the longer term trend of southern whites leaving the Democratic party like Nate Cohn does, almost everybody thinks Obama lost white votes because he's considered black.
What needs to be pointed out, however, is that most of Obama's current approval slide likely isn't because of racism. There's no way to know that for sure, but a recent piece by Jamelle Bouie points to a rough method for knowing.
Compare how Obama's approval changed between now and just before the election. We can examine how his support in different regions of the country has shifted in the polling. If Obama's fall is because white voters can't stand Obama because of his race, then we'd expect the sharpest fall to be among southern whites.
The latest Pew poll shows that not to be the case. Pew has consistently been one of the best pollsters out there, so I trust their numbers. They break down the vote by region and race.
The greatest fall for Obama isn't among whites in the south; it's in the northeast – you know that region that was on the correct side of the Civil War. Obama went from winning northern whites by 10pt in the election to a -12 net approval now. The next greatest drop is in the west where Obama fought to a near-tie in the election, but now has a net approval of nearly -20 among white voters. Close is his 14pt drop in the midwest where Obama's net approval is now a measly -23pt.
The one place where Obama's support among whites hasn't fallen sharply is in the south. Obama's net approval there is only a statistically insignificant 3pt lower than it was before the election. In other words, it's likely he completely bottomed out in that region. Lack of white support for Obama hasn't bottomed out in other regions.
To check my work, I also examined Obama's Gallup approval and disapproval before and after the election. They don't break down race by region, though they do break out Obama's approval by region. Once again, it's in the northeast where Obama's drop has most prevalent. Obama has fallen from a 57% approval in the five weeks before the election to only 50.7% in the last six weeks since the NSA leaks.
None of this is to say that racism isn't playing a role for some subset of the new disapprovers of Obama. There are plenty of racists who don't live in the south. It's just that you're more likely be racist, if you're from the south. And chances are that if racism was affecting your vote, you probably wouldn't have turned against Obama in the last few months. You probably did so before now. You likely didn't vote for him in 2012.
Obama's current drop among white voters is better explained by the longer term trend of whites without a college degree leaving the Democratic party. He lost these voters by 22pt in 2012 and now manages a very meager -40pt net approval from them. It's difficult to assign the drop to racism given that these are voters who stuck with Obama twice.
Moreover, Obama is also seeing his numbers drop among minorities. Gallup with its large sample sizes has Obama's net approval falling by about 10pt since the election among among nonwhite voters. That is, Obama's problem isn't only whites without a college degree.
The only group that is staying steady with Obama is whites with a graduate degree. My own theory is that this likely is as much about the economy as education. Whites with at least a college degree happen to be the wealthiest and less likely to be affected by an economy increasingly viewed by the voters as weak.
Pew actually has Obama gaining ground with whites making at least $75,000 since the election. His net approval among them is -13pt compared to losing them by 19pt against Romney. Among all voters, Gallup has Obama's approval declining by only 1.6pt among those making at least $75,000 versus 4.6pt overall.
Thus, racism definitely played some role in determining Obama's margins in 2012, but his current slide probably has little or nothing to do with it. Obama is losing ground amongst whites who aren't southern and among all races. His declines are worst among individuals making less the median income – possibly because of an economy viewed as weak. The losses among whites without a college degree specifically fit well with longer term trends that Republicans can exploit in future non-Obama elections.
